Residency artists’ biographies

Sarah Biagini:
As a flicker junkie, my films are engineered to call attention to the perceptual mode we’re simultaneously using to perceive them. I try to emphasize film’s multiple personalities not just through frame-by-frame flicker, but also through the construction of intricate layers of composite imagery. By collaging appropriated and original footage, each frame of a composite image becomes a co-existence of the histories, techniques, narrative content, and social/political context of disparate source materials.

The common subjective thread between my projects is often the act of interpreting personal histories. I conduct extensive research into an interesting idea or person and try to represent something of what I imagine that person’s experience to be. I choose subjects that give me an excuse to learn about something new.

In 2012 I completed an MFA at the University of Colorado, where I received a Virgil Grillo Memorial Production Grant, and a Beverly Sears Research Grant and have since been finishing a long-term 16mm film project, As the Squirrel Turns. Prior to beginning grad school I was lucky enough to spend four months as a visiting artist in Paros, Greece, at the Hellenic International Studies in the Arts.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sarah-biagini/10/332/319
http://processreversal.org/events_tags/sarah-biagini/

Lin Li:
Originally from Hong Kong, I now reside in Glasgow, UK. Coming from an academic and employment background in Social Sciences and disability service, I have taken courses with the Open Colleges of the Arts and have gradually shifted my vocation to fine art. My practice started fourteen years ago with a focus on painting, but over the years I have experimented with a diversity of techniques and media. In 2011, I began to use moving images in my work partly because it allows me to explore a subject I am particularly interested in – the interaction between image and sound. Last year I also started creating stand-alone audio pieces. My videos have been screened in a number of festivals in the UK, Serbia, Bulgaria, China, and Switzerland, and my audio work has been played in the Lights Out Listening Group meetings, including a recent event in the Camden Arts Centre in London. My practice is a form of meditative engagement with a wide range of subjects. Some of the recurrent themes in my work are the ephemeral elements of nature and the transience of human experiences, and a current direction focuses on the divergent interpretations of the concept of peace.
http://www.linli-art.com/
www.linli-art.com – videos

Melanie Dutton:
I use video, print, sound and digital media to explore spaces, induce perceptions of personality and play with audience engagement. My recent work includes moving plants, a cat called Romeo and some talking elevators.

Recently, I have been making videos which are easy to ignore. I record things that are familiar to me, but that through a subtle change have become unsettling or otherwise alien. When creating work I keep in mind my daily interaction with broadcast media. I am interested in the way that television and radio can seep into the periphery of our senses, causing us to involuntarily memorise adverts, slogans, idents and jingles.
http://cargocollective.com/melaniedutton/About-Melanie-Dutton

Sarah Bliss:
Rooted in sensory ethnography, fieldwork, historical research, and kinesthetic exploration, my practice investigates the complex relationships between body, place, language and memory. Video, performance, sound, photography, text, and installation are all outputs.

I’m currently engaged in a body of work incubated during a residency on the remote Gaeltacht coast of southwest County Kerry, Ireland in 2012. This ongoing project investigates the workings and failings of memory; the nature of a language’s rootedness in place; and the relationship of body to land. The people and community of Ballinskelligs (population 600), with whom I worked closely, are not only subjects, but also participants in the making of the work.

I received my Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. My work has been recognized by a 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Sculpture/Installation; and I’m the recipient of full fellowship awards for residencies at the Cill Rialaig Project in Ballinskelligs, Ireland, and the Vermont Studio Center. My work has been screened at the TransArt Film Festival in Berlin; Espaço Cultural ESPM in Porte Alegre, Brazil; Interstitial Theatre in Seattle; and ArtJail in New York. I have taught both ecopsychology and art history at Lesley University, and I serve as Vice President of the Board of Temenos, an off-the-grid non-sectarian retreat center in rural Massachusetts.
http://www.sarahblissart.com/